Zengin was frowning at me. "Powers of attorney can be revoked."

"Possibly I have not been entirely frank with you," said Heller. "I did not give you my identity."

"No, you did not," said Zengin.

"I," said Heller, "am an officer of the Crown. The matter is completely secret. But I am taking Sultan to a country very far away. He will be tried and, with the evidence we have, he will be sentenced for life or executed. I can assure you that you will never lay eyes on him again."

"Really?" said Mudur Zengin, his jaw dropped. He looked at Faht Bey.

"He is just what he says," said Faht Bey, indicating Heller. "He is a very capable and trusted officer. As a matter of fact, Sultan Bey is under arrest right this minute. We are not troubling Turkish authorities with the matter, but Sultan will be gone from this country in a matter of days, never to return."

Mudur Zengin began to smile. Then he began to laugh. Then he reached forward and grasped Heller by the hand and rose, pumping it. He put his arm around Heller's shoulders. "Sir," he said, "consider me your lifelong friend!" Emotion choked his voice.

An hour later, practically awash with Turkish coffee and their pockets full of cigars of the finest blend, Faht Bey and Heller paused by the car. The time had been taken up by clerks and bank attorneys drawing up all sorts of papers that Heller had made me sign. They hadn't given me any coffee and Zengin's praises or Heller were acid in my ears. Heller was making sure Faht Bey had all the papers in his stuffed briefcase. "There you go," Heller said. "Now you've got ten times the finance you ever had, and all without even touching filthy drugs."

Faht Bey was looking at him with worshipful eyes. He gave him

a crossed-arm salute. It was sickening!

Heller, in the car, before he called our drivers, buzzed the viewer-phone. The Countess Krak's face promptly showed.

"Business all went well," he said. "The confessions turned the

tide."

"What are they going to do with them?" said the Countess

Krak.

"Mudur Zengin is putting the copies of the confessions in his vault. He's just going to show a corner of them if the matter ever comes up. There won't be another whisper about flying saucers." He laughed. "Oh, you dear, you really are the most. Implicating Rockecenter himself was the master touch."

"Now, Jettero," she said, "you are inferring that you have a dishonest future wife. It just so happens that every scrap of those confessions is the living truth. I even have Rockecenter's orders in his own handwriting here, and copies of all of Forrest Closure's files, in case it ever comes up again."

"It won't," said Heller. "And forgive me for doubting you. You always do so splendidly. Do you want anything from Istanbul? An emerald necklace or something?"

"I don't want anything from this planet," said the Countess Krak.

"All right," said Heller. "We're coming home."

I sat seething in the car. He had taken my base, he had taken my car, he had taken my gold certificates. Before he left Istanbul he bought her an emerald necklace in spite of her refusal. And it was only because he didn't think of it that he didn't take the money for it out of my wallet.

Riding back to Afyon, I could hardly restrain myself. Oh, yes, he was going home.

He was going home to Lombar Hisst—and his death! 

The next day at the base, the cruelty of them toward me continued and even intensified. I could tell from the attitudes of those about me that they were taking a sadistic pleasure in abusing one whom they thought could not defend himself. I submitted to the abuse only so they would not suspect what I had planned for them.

In the morning the Countess Krak took it into her head—or had been asked by Heller—to collect all the evidence that would hang me.

She said, "When we turn you over to the court, we want to make sure the justiciary has all the evidence. While I was in that cell, I had ample time to read the Voltar Confederacy Combined Compendium Complete, including all the Codes. It was very thoughtful of you to put that in there. Voltar law is very straightforward and no nonsense. But you have been associated with Earth and my recent experience has shown that anyone knowledgeable in its so-called justice can find loopholes by the ton. Jettero, for some reason, wants you to have a fair trial. You will claim, of course, that there are a lot of loopholes. And the biggest of them is that 'you didn't have your records' and 'all the evidence is hearsay.' Faht Bey has several teams out collecting sworn affidavits on things you have done. So we're going to dig into the dustbins you call your files and assemble them, and if you have any defense at all, you sure better find it."

I was quite sure there wouldn't be any trial of me. The trial of them, by Lombar, would be quite swift. And as to their affidavits, I fully intended to come back here with a Death Battalion and wipe this nest of traitors out. But under her piercing eye, lest she suspect that they didn't really have me at all, I let myself be propelled by two guards into the secret room of the villa and under their watchful glare got to work.

Things were hidden under piles of other things; boxes of recorded strips were covered with dust, paint and sira. My logs were so badly scribbled even I had trouble making them out—reading my own handwriting was not a skill I had acquired any facility in. The dust grew thick in the air and after a while she got restless and began to wander around the villa.

The bug in Utanc's room was working very clearly and I heard her in there. She had found the two little boys crying under the bed. She didn't speak any Turkish and they spoke nothing else and she couldn't make much sense out of the blubbering she got for answers, so she went and got Karagoz and Melahat, both of whom spoke English, and tried to get to the bottom of what was wrong. The villa headman and the housekeeper were pretty embarrassed. The Countess Krak listened in growing horror and disgust. It seemed that Gaylov had made the two little boys into catamites, and each night and sometimes in the day had practiced many sexual perversions with them to satisfy his lust. They knew all along that Utanc was a man but hadn't told anybody. All this talk of homosexuality was making me very ill and the guards had to keep nudging me to keep me working at the records. So I was not prepared at all for the way it all wound up. The Countess Krak couldn't believe it, but it seemed that what the little boys were upset about was that they weren't getting it anymore, now that Utanc had disappeared. Krak, on an embarrassed via of Melahat and Karagoz, tried to argue them out of it. But what she got was even worse. The two small boys said that unless their mothers let them go find Utanc they were going to run away and find other men to sleep with, and if they were prevented from doing that they were going to kill themselves the very first chance they got!

By this time both Karagoz and Melahat were in tears, the little boys were in hysteria and the Countess Krak was in rage.

"This perverted planet!" cried the Countess Krak. "It's just as if they never heard of normal sex!"

The two little boys were dragged away and I could hear the Countess going through Utanc's things and giving orders to the staff to pack the whole room up into trunks for storage.

After a time she came in and glared at me. "While you're at it," she said, "you better dig up all the evidence of how you got mixed up with Gaylov. There are thirty-two statutes in the penal codes relating to homosexuality."

"There's homosexuality in the Confederacy!" I flashed.

"Not with children, you filthy brute."

"Wait a minute!" I flashed. "I didn't have anything to do with that! I hate homos!"